The Unruly Princess is one of six stories in this collection which is aimed at children aged 4 to 12. All these charming tales have been written by a qualified and experienced Montessori teacher and they have a strong bias towards the natural world.

The intention is that older children can read the stories unaided while younger ones will enjoy having them read aloud – especially at bedtime. Not only are the tales entertaining, they are also designed to provoke discussions, fact-finding missions and general interest in the environment and creatures around us.

Sample text

“Lucy pretended not to be interested at first, but before long her enthusiasm couldn’t be contained any longer. This was the ideal den: ready-made, the perfect size, and full of shelves and hooks. She would make it into an Aladdin’s Cave. She announced that no-one was to even peek into the cupboard until she told them to, and began the first of many trips up and down stairs fetching all her trinkets and ornaments: strings of beads, ribbons, plastic animals, artificial flowers, Christmas decorations … She was a real squirrel, and these were the nuts hoarded over several years.

She hung her beads and ribbons from the hooks, draping them this way and that from one hook to another to create a complicated web of colour. Some of the beads were bright, translucent glass ones so that in the gloom of the cupboard they shone dully until a stray ray of light woke a spark of peacock blue or amber in their hearts. She lined the shelves thickly with anything and everything shiny or colourful and preferably both. There was no theme other than the aesthetic pleasure provided by fortuitious juxtapositions of colour and form. A plaster pig was flanked by a conch shell and a cut glass perfume bottle; a brass eagle from the top of the grandfather clock stared into the depths of a plastic rose.”

Italy – an expat’s view

A postcard from Umbria is an anthology of articles written by an experienced author describing her and her husband’s exploits as they emigrate nearly 2,000 km due south – a journey which takes them from the UK to the Umbria region of central Italy. Before they can live in their new house, they have to spend six fruitless hours in front of a Notary because the vendor had built an extension without planning permission and then their removal men knock down the gate pier and get snowed in. Later they relocate within Italy to a house built on the site of another house destroyed by an earthquake. It has been left abandoned and needs some very ingenious restoration.

Along the way, there are snippets about hunters, the limited Italian diet, the bitterly cold winters, and vivid descriptions of native wildlife such as wild boar, snakes, butterflies and porcupines.

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There is plenty of humour, pathos, and wit in the articles which paint a fascinating, if somewhat different picture to that portrayed by television crews in whose world the sun always shines (when temperatures down to -12C are the norm in winter) and the olive oil crop is ‘liquid gold’ (when the reality is that the cost of labour picking the olives and then pressing them grossly exceeds their value for most landowners).

Alongside the text are numerous photographs taken by the author who is also a keen natural history photographer.

Although ‘A postcard from Umbria’ is a very unique and personal account of two British expats who moved to Italy, it is also a valuable source of advice for anyone considering making the move.

Two great novels at a reduced price!

Queen Anne’s Lace opens just after the death of the father of the family. Isabel, his wife, is feeling purposeless and seeks solace in a nearby convent. The short stay opens her eyes to a new way of life and she becomes convinced that the life of a nun would give her the direction that she is now lacking. Besides starting down the path towards becoming one, she decides to gift the family cottage to the convent.

This decision does not sit so well with her three children …

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Wild Goose is the story of Jemima, a young girl growing up at the home of her grandparents in rural East Anglia. Her widowed father is an Oxford don who reads literature and sees that as the natural career progression for his daughter. Jemima’s talents lie in a different direction and, despite her father’s clumsy attempts to gently but firmly guide her down the path he followed, she takes a strong interest in the natural world.

Underlying the seemingly tranquil world that she lives in, there is a dark and growing alienation between father and daughter. Jemima wants to please him but she can’t and this internal conflict erupts during her school exams which she flunks and then attempts suicide by drowning in her beloved sea.

A short story for children

Michael is a young boy who is fascinated by the myths and legends surrounding Robin Hood. One day, while very upset, he runs into the forest and meets a tree that can talk. The tree befriends him and describes what it’s like to be a tree and how the annual cycle of living and dying is so very different from the life of us humans.

This is a beautifully written short story for children – either for them to read themselves or to be read to. It instils a love of nature and ecology while maintaining a sense of human adventure and self-discovery.

Can the evil warlock be stopped in time?

Hilda lives alone and hermit-like in an old cottage in an estuarine area of the coast.

By means of a secret path, she can gain access to an Eden-like world called Skolthan which is beyond the realm of our earthly one. If she had been the sole possessor of this knowledge, Skolthan would have been safe but she isn’t and there are dark forces afoot who would corrupt and spoil the new world as part of their exploitation of its powers.

Hilda’s arch-nemesis is her ex-husband, now a powerful warlock who plans to access Skolthan by means of a ritual sacrifice. He is aided by Alice, his evil side-kick who visibly masquerades as a district mid-wife.

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The object of Hilda’s struggle is to save the mother and child who are destined to be slaughtered and also to protect the island from irreparable damage at the hands of the evil-doers. Will she succeed and, if so, at what price?

A modern family saga and romance

This story begins in an old cottage near the coast. With the death of her husband fresh behind her, Isabel McKay is a bit of a lost soul. Her children have grown up and moved on and her partner of many years has gone. She feels lonely and purposeless.

Isabel finds her purpose in a nearby convent, so much so that she eventually offers the family cottage to the Order. Her children and their own intended partners object vociferously to this decision but to no avail. Ironically, the nuns reject the cottage but not the proceeds from its sale.

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Kate, one of Isabel’s daughters is pregnant and, at her wedding Derek, her new (and delightfully obnoxious) father-in-law winds Isabel up so much that she confesses the situation to her children.

This announcement brings about a logical but, nevertheless, surprising solution to the dilemma.